


Sinking into your cold embrace

by adlerobsessed



Category: Skulduggery Pleasant - Fandom
Genre: China has a lot of dark thoughts, F/F, Mentions of Violence, ehh some poetic rambling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:28:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27271915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adlerobsessed/pseuds/adlerobsessed
Summary: It’s narcissism in its purest form, like brushing ones lips against the mirror, or falling in love with ones own voice, but this is desperate, all consuming, and China doesn’t know if Eliza’s kiss is absolving her or suffocating to the point where she can’t breathe anymore.She wonders if she truly cares.-In which China takes hollow comfort from  the lies and momentary amusements she can find.Until she doesn’t.
Relationships: Eliza Scorn/China Sorrows, Skulduggery Pleasant/China Sorrows
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	Sinking into your cold embrace

**Author's Note:**

> a bunch of poetic nonsense that I wrote in response to a tumblr prompt ;))

There have always been lies that China finds easier to swallow. Those that help her sleep, those that assuage her fears and those that let her do what is easy. Lies which help her forget the tear stricken faces of those who didn’t deserve to burn, and lies which let her relish in the sensation of bone, flesh and skin rupturing under her own fingers.

 _Heathens_ , her grandmother had hissed. _They must be dealt with, in whatever manner necessary._

China doubts that her crushing this snivelling, pathetic girl’s windpipe is dealing with a heathen, but there’s a giddy feeling, lurking and peeking out, beginning to take full form as she tightens her grip around the girl’s throat. It’s necessary, she reminds herself, even as she squeezes harder, if only to enjoy the girl’s strangled cries.

It’s duty. Not enjoyment. And like all enjoyment, it ends quickly, the girl going limp in her hands, her body’s previous spasms quickly stopping. Immediately bored, China lets the girl drop to the ground, wiping her hands on the corpse’s clothes.

A corpse. She mulls over the word as she joined the rest of her men. How easy it was to rip a life from something.

And how utterly boring and predictable it was.

“Everything all right, Sorrows?” It’s always Jaron who asks first. First by her side, first to come to her aid.

First to fail at understanding how _dreary_ China finds this war now.

“Of course,” she replies smoothly, offering him a slight smile. “It was not a challenge. They never are now.”

He laughs at that, his smile a warm, pleasant thing, so stark to the brutal surroundings. “I don’t think there’s anyone left who’s a fun challenge now.”

Screams of a child, then a wife, then an old lover. A knife, blood on marble floors and a body burnt for all to see.

China had always known the cost of war. She just didn’t realise how dull victory would be in the end.

-

When people ask China why she joined the fray, words of devotion and servitude easily form on her tongue, bashful eyes and scraping bows following if necessary. A pitiful deception, but a necessary one. One, she herself had once believed.

In truth, it was always boredom that had driven her to act. Her first sigil, her first library, her first love, her first death, all experiences, new and invigorating until they weren’t, turning rusty and dull as she struggled to amuse herself with something that would fill her infinite time.

When she has stumbled across the group of radicals, China had felt that long craved rush of excitement, one only passionately cultivated as she fell in further and further, more and more names crossed out on lists because of her service.

And for awhile, she thought that exhilaration had come from the pleasure of fulfilling the gods’ wishes.

And then a decade passed. And then another.

And then a century.

And China no longer felt such exhilaration, having no true battles or enemies to skilfully defeat. And soon she came to the realisation, painful but true.

She goes to the chapel anyway, bored or not.

Because she knows her grandmother never lied about the vengeful gods that wait behind the veil.

-

When China meets Eliza Scorn, she barely pays attention to the woman. She’s tired, though she never lets that show, and really she’d like to return her quarters and have some solitude for the first time in months.

But while China may be bored, she is not stupid, and one does not refuse the demands of her commander.

And so she nods cordially at the woman and barely spares her another look as she sits down for dinner, instead immediately conferring with Serpine. A clever man, far too clever for her liking, but she prefers to keep such a serpent in eyesight rather than allowing it to slither around her neck and strangle her in her sleep, and so she makes light conversation with him over the recent eradication efforts in France.

“Perhaps it would be best if my Diablrie were to handle the situation. Marseilles still stands, and that makes me cautious,” China says, mulling over the man’s information.

“You think they will try to surge through our lines, even with our superior numbers?”

“Why give them the time to calculate, when we can corner them at the source and eradicate them once and for all?” China pressed, leaning in closer. “You know we could have the gates down in hours.”

Serpine takes a sip of his wine, mulling over the proposal for a moment before glancing over her shoulder. “What do you think, Eliza? Worth the risk?”

China spins round, pinning down the redhead with a glance. The woman remarkably holds her gaze. “I see no disadvantage it would cause us,” she says slowly, each word rolling off her tongue easily, like melted honey dripping.

China, satisfied, returns to her meal, taking another bite when Eliza speaks again. “If Miss Sorrows desires easy prey, who are we to deny her such amusement?”

China does not react to petty jibes, but she can practically feel her facial muscles twitch as she resists the urge to narrow her eyes, especially when Serpine chuckles. “I suppose so. Very well, I shall discuss the deployment with our great leader.” He smiles, eerily similar to that of a wolf baring his teeth. “Enjoy the rest of your evening, ladies.”

By the time he has left, China has composed herself completely, her brow once again free of wrinkles. Yet the urge to glare at this new acquaintance almost overwhelms her, and while she cuts off a piece of steak delicately, China imagines repeatedly stabbing this woman until she had no voice left to insult.

She takes a deep breath, banishing such thoughts, and returns back to her meal, almost human again.

Until she opens her mouth once more.

“I’ve heard so much about you, I feel like I already know you.”

China lets one brow raise a fraction, as she reaches for her goblet. “And yet you do not. How unfortunate for you.”

Eliza shrugs. “I deem myself quite lucky. I had been told that it was impossible to resist your charms, yet I feel no gravitation towards you.”

China makes sure to put down her drink smoothly, gracefully even, as she imagines cracking open the woman’s skull with it. “Is that so. However shall I recover from such a loss?”

“Can it be called a loss if it was never held in the first place?”

And now, China lets herself frown. “You seem remarkably intent on vexing me, Miss Scorn. Tell me, have you often desired such rapid self-destruction?”

“And you seem incredibly bored, Miss Sorrows,” Eliza responds easily, twirling her fork as she smiles innocently, even as China stills. “Tell me, why might that be?”

China allows herself one moment before replying. “You’re an observant little thing,” she all but spits out, just managing to veneer her words with enough sweetness to disguise such bitterness.

“I do my best,” Eliza boasts, confident until China grips her chin, making the woman’s eyes widen almost impossibly so.

“Your best isn’t good enough.” Oh, but how it _was_ , and that made China’s heart race in ways she hadn’t felt in years, decades, not since she nearly perished on the battlefield, not since her grandmother had forced her into her knees.

“Then teach me to be better.”

There a thousand things more important, more worthwhile, more _ordinary_ than what this arrogant girl has just demanded.

And yet, China feels that thrill in her heart, one that she hasn’t felt in years.

And so she merely tilts her head and appraises the woman before her. “All right. Prove yourself.”

-

There are times when she looks back on that night and China wonders what Eliza stole from her.

Poets would have said it was her heart. China knows it must be something precious, something _essential_ , a muscle or an organ, an it that only breathes back into life when their bodies meld together and China can suddenly live again.

She spends hours trying to wrestle herself back from this woman, who seems more part of her than separate at times, bonded and merged together like some strange hybrid creature, ever knowing and understanding, and China is lost, parched and starving as she searches for completion.

It’s narcissism in its purest form, like brushing ones lips against the mirror, or falling in love with ones own voice, but this is desperate, all consuming, and China doesn’t know if Eliza’s kiss is absolving her or suffocating to the point where she can’t breathe anymore.

She wonders if she truly cares. If this is hell, she is drowning, surely but slowly, and it is a far better end than she deserves.

-

It’s a small thing, a promise made, a child taken, and suddenly China realises just how much she’d hidden away from life over the years, Eliza’s embrace more trapping than comforting, and prayers more hollow than heartfelt. She’s always known how little devotion she truly had, deep down.

In the end, she stops going to the chapel, and instead brings the boy away with her.

And this time, she tells herself that her grandmother, who lied about so many other things, must have lied about gods who damned those who walked away from their church.

-

In the end, she doesn’t get her heart back, instead ripping Eliza’s out to replace her own.

It’s really no surprise when she comes looking for it.


End file.
